Hub with Firewire 400 AND Firewire 800?

N

Nosh

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I've noticed quite a few six port Firewire 400 ports, and at least one three-port Firewire 800 port. I've also seen adapters to convert 800 to 400. But these are rather one-sided and expensive. What i'm looking for is something like a six port hub, connects to a Firewire 800 port, and has three 400 ports, and three 800 ports. That would be ideal. Anyone seen one?

Nosh
 
I'm not sure they could exist, because as far as I know, you can plug a firewire 400 device into an 800 port and it'll run just fine, sans having to use an adapter.

However, I have also heard that using any firewire 400 device with any 800 device will slow the whole chain down to 400 -- you just can't mix them unless you want the whole thing to run at 400.

I would assume that this would eliminate the need for a 400/800 hub combo since that would effectively slow ALL ports down to 400, unless there was some sort of "intelligent switching" going on in that hub that would detect the speed of the device and shut off any other devices that weren't the same speed.
 
That would make sense, but 1394ta.org states something along the lines of "You can mix and match devices of different speeds on the same bus using "isochronous" data transmission.", while referencing three 1394 speeds, and two 1394b speeds.

Nosh
 
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